The Inside Track | COMMENTARY

Rocket Was Short on Fuel in Final Start

MIAMI — Roger Clemens' real first name is William. Not everyone knows this. He was born and raised in Ohio, not in Texas. Not everyone knows that, either.

And the total number of no-hitters this no-doubt-about-it Hall of Famer of the future has pitched in the major leagues is:

(a) Five? (b) Two? (c) One?

The answer, not everyone knows, is:

(d) None.

He was the third-best pitcher on his high school team. He never got a base hit in the majors until his 12th season.

Also not common knowledge.

But on the whole, baseball fans do know quite a bit about Clemens, a tall, swaggering, steely-eyed, cold-blooded, broad-shouldered, wrestler-bodied, intense individual who for the past 20 years has been blessed with, by acclamation, the best arm in the game.

And after 310 victories, 607 starts, 4,278 2/3 innings, 4,099 strikeouts and 46 shutouts -- staggering statistics that do not even count what he has done in postseason games -- the rapid-fire pitcher known as "the Rocket" made his last start in a Major League Baseball game here Wednesday night.

It was far from his best.

After all the hype, all the buildup to Game 4 of the World Series and the likely final appearance by Clemens on a big-league baseball diamond, he barely made it through a single inning.

Miguel Cabrera of the Florida Marlins, a next-generation star who was born 13 months before Clemens pitched his first game in the majors, was the fourth batter the Rocket faced and he launched a ball over the right-field wall.

It took Clemens 41 pitches just to get the side out. By the time he did, he was down 3-0 to a Florida franchise that had been in the majors only half as long as he had.

Clemens made no formal announcement that this would be his last season or last game. And it certainly isn't beyond the realm of possibility that if the World Series were to go to a Game 7, in a late-inning (or extra-inning) emergency the Yankees could call on Clemens to pitch to a batter or two.

Chances are, though, this was it for him.

"Roger, for the sake of argument," Reggie Jackson teased him in April, when the Yankees' season was just beginning, "let's say you go 22-7, with a 2.94 ERA, and you win four games in the postseason and you guys win it all. What would you do then?"

"Reggie," replied Roger, "one year from today, if you and me are together, it'll be in Pebble Beach [playing golf]. I'm done."

Clemens came pretty close to putting Jackson's hypothetical situation to the test. His record for the 2003 season was 17-9, and his earned-run average 3.91. But his mind is made up. Clemens did everything but stop and smell the roses -- or the palm trees, perhaps, in Florida's case -- before Wednesday's game, even scooping up a handful of dirt for souvenir's sake.

Joe Torre, his manager, promised Clemens the game's official lineup card if he won it and wanted it. And the pitcher reiterated his intention to retire to Texas and find something else to occupy his time, because, he said, "It's basically a case of been there, done that."

Where he will retire is to a 15,000-square-foot house in Houston a few blocks from his high school. A fitness nut, Clemens has a home gymnasium that by itself is 7,000 square feet large, plus a quarter-mile running track, a basketball court, a batting cage and half a normal-sized baseball infield, just for himself and his four kids.

If he ever pitches again, it could be in Athens in the 2004 Summer Olympics, which he has included in some of the "neat stuff that has been brought to my attention" for a life beyond baseball.

Much of the time, Clemens plans to devote himself to the activities and athletic pursuits of his children. The pitcher's own biological father, an Ohio truck driver, deserted the family before Roger turned 4. He was 9 when his stepfather died.

"I grew up fast after that," said Clemens, who for his high school years moved to Texas to live with an older brother.

In the years since, he often has carried a chip on his shoulder. Clemens is one of the few players even to have been ejected from a playoff game, getting the heave-ho from a 1990 game in Oakland by plate umpire Terry Cooney for abusive language while arguing balls and strikes.

He has earned a reputation for brushback pitches and a ferocious attitude, infuriating New York Met fans by beaning popular catcher Mike Piazza with a pitch that many saw as deliberate.

"He has had to live with that Piazza thing for a while now," Torre noted before Wednesday's game.

But the pitcher will be remembered more for the 300th victory and 4,000th strikeout he recorded in the 2003 season. It was his year, with a last-minute invitation to Chicago for the All-Star Game in midsummer -- he was fishing in Texas when the call came -- and a possible World Series championship ring at season's end.

"I'll be happy, but I'll be sad," Clemens said before going out to the mound one last time. "I'm just grateful for this opportunity to go out there on the grandest stage."